Director-General who turned a blind eye to BBC meltdown - and paid the ultimate price

George Entwistle’s resignation last night came amid claims that he simply lacked the ‘grip’ to oversee the BBC.

Mr Entwistle quit after admitting yesterday he had not even been aware that BBC2’s Newsnight was about to link a senior Tory to child sex abuse ring.

Appointed in the summer, his short reign overseeing the Corporation’s vast empire lasted less than two months – he only moved into the director-general’s office on September 17.

Last night, media commentator Steve Hewlett said Mr Entwistle – previously director of the BBC division with responsibility for all the Corporation’s television channels – had not appeared to be ‘in control’ of what was going on around him.

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And the crisis deepened last night as it was claimed that the former director-general personally intervened to axe a Panorama investigation into two newspaper tycoons, which was due to be aired tomorrow.

According to well-placed BBC sources, Mr Entwistle ordered the programme on Daily Telegraph owners Sir Frederick and Sir David Barclay to be pulled as he believed it was ‘risky’ – but did not fully explain what he meant.

It will be replaced by a documentary about badgers.

Mr Entwistle’s departure comes in the wake of more revelations about Newsnight’s false claims about the North Wales paedophile ring:

A senior journalist working with the programme sparked furious internet speculation about the senior Tory said to be implicated into the scandal by posting a tweet while under the influence of ‘potent medication’.

The BBC was warned hours before broadcast that it hadn’t put the allegations to the political figure, now known to be Lord McAlpine, and that he would sue if anyone linked him to the abuse

Mr Entwistle said he missed all the warning signs, and the programme itself ‘because he was out’.The former director-general yesterday told Radio 4’s Today programme that, despite being editor-in-chief of the BBC with final responsibility for broadcasts, he does not ‘sign off’ every programme.

IN THE FIRING LINE?

Head of news: Helen Boaden

Newsnight editor: Peter Rippon

Radio 5 Live controller: Adrian van Klaveren

However, with the Corporation being engulfed by scandal after scandal, he apparently took the decision to veto tomorrow’s investigation into the notoriously reclusive Barclay brothers.

The BBC has refused to reveal the contents of that film, but it involved a six-month investigation led by the veteran reporter John Sweeney.

Mr Entwistle’s intervention had left Panorama staff behind the investigation feeling ‘bleak,’ said one source close to the programme.

A source in the BBC said: ‘There was no personal communication between him [Entwistle] and the Panorama team. But he told his lieutenants, who told us that the programme is not strong enough and the risk is too high.

‘That’s his judgment. Others, in fact everybody, disagree with him.’

The makers of Panorama are now understood to be in a fierce internal argument with BBC executives in the hope of broadcasting the programme at a later date.

A BBC spokesman declined to comment on any decisions regarding Panorama, but tomorrow’s episode will now be about the Government’s aborted plan to cull badgers.

Investigation axed: Instead of showing a programme about the Barclay brothers, a show about the Government's aborted plan to cull badgers will be aired

It is likely to prove less contentious than the Newsnight film implicating Lord McAlpine that plunged the BBC into its latest crisis – a crisis that stated with an ill-considered tweet from the editor of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism Iain Overton who had been working with Newsnight on the report into child abuse in North Wales.

At 11am on the day of the show,
November 2, he posted an explosive tweet saying: ‘If all goes well we’ve
got a Newsnight out tonight about a very senior political figure who is
a paedophile.’

The message prompted an immediate frenzy, and led to the BBC being bombarded with calls from journalists seeking clarification.

In
particular his words were seized upon by Newsnight’s former political
editor Michael Crick, who told Overton that the politician concerned had
not been contacted about the allegations.

Last
night a source said Overton has been taking ‘potent medication’ for a
recently diagnosed serious illness and that this, in part, had led him
to tweet ‘unwisely’.

The
source added that his Twitter post was something he ‘deeply regretted’.
But although he later erased the tweet, the damage was already done.

That
evening Crick appeared on Channel 4 News to warn that the ‘senior Tory’
was planning to sue anyone who linked him to paedophilia. As we now
know the politician in question was Lord McAlpine, but at the time Crick
was unable to name him for legal reasons.

LEVESON LINK TO FREELANCE TEAM USED BY NEWSNIGHT

The calamitous Newsnight report was conducted by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which – ironically in the circumstances – was set up to counter the perceived decline in investigative reporting by the mainstream media.

The not-for-profit body is funded and supported by a network of media and City grandees with links both to the Hacked Off campaign against press intrusion and the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics.

Its trustees include Sir David Bell, who was the chairman of the Media Standards Trust when it spawned the Hacked Off campaign to help ‘victims of press abuse’. Three weeks after launching the campaign Sir David stepped aside to sit on the Leveson Inquiry.

The McAlpine investigation was carried out by the bureau’s lead reporter, Angus Stickler, an ex-Newsnight reporter who also worked on the Today programme.

The bureau’s editor, Iain Overton, has a distinguished track record as a commissioning executive at ITN and a senior producer at the BBC.

But it was his Twitter message 12 hours before the Newsnight broadcast, which talked of ‘a very senior political figure who is a paedophile’, that prompted a torrent of speculation on the internet and precipitated the current crisis for the BBC.

But while half the nation had been drawn into the intrigue, Mr Entwistle was apparently oblivious.

He missed the Twitter meltdown, the warning from Crick and, indeed, the Newsnight programme itself. ‘I was out,’ he told Radio 4’s Today programme.

Despite his illness, Overton spoke at the Oxford Union the night before the Newsnight programme was broadcast. Afterwards he boasted that the following evening’s programme was going to expose a top Tory as a paedophile. Crick, who was also present, is said to have asked: ‘Do you mean McAlpine?’ Overton replied: ‘Well, you said it.’

Over at the Newsnight offices there was ‘intense concern’ over the planned programme and the decision to make a dramatic claim on the basis of a single source.

There was anger too that, in the words of one highly-placed insider, the BBC ‘hierarchy appeared to be asleep at the wheel’.

Despite McAlpine’s repeated denials to Crick in the hours leading up to Newsnight’s broadcast, nobody from the BBC ever contacted the former Tory treasurer for a comment.

A BBC News source has told The Mail on Sunday that on that day there was ‘a lot of shouting in the office’ between deputy editor Liz Gibbons, currently in charge of the programme, and two other journalists over whether to run the story.

It appears Adrian van Klaveren, the controller of Radio 5 Live who was last month drafted in to bolster the BBC’s news management structure, signed it off.

Last night Overton appeared to be considering his position. Having tweeted that the trustees of the Bureau of Investigative Journalism were ‘appalled at what appears to be a breach of its standards’, he added: ‘I will make a statement once I have met the Trust.’

Humphrys to his boss: 'You should go, shouldn't you?'

Outgoing BBC director-general George Entwistle was yesterday involved in an extraordinary exchange with veteran presenter John Humphrys on BBC’s flagship Radio 4 Today news programme.

Stand off: John Humphrys (left) grills George Entwistle (right) on air and questions him, 'you should go, shouldn't you?'

During a tense, 15-minute interview, Mr Entwistle defended his apparent lack of awareness of the Newsnight programme in which Lord McAlpine was wrongly accused of being involved in a child abuse scandal. Here are excerpts from the transcript:

JH: But you must have known what happened because a tweet was put out 24 hours beforehand telling the world that something was going to happen on Newsnight that night that would reveal extraordinary things about child abuse and that would involve a senior Tory figure from the Thatcher years. You didn’t see that tweet?GE: I didn’t see that tweet, John, I now understand...JH: Why not?GE: Well I, uh, I check Twitter sometimes at the end of the day or I don’t check it at all.JH: You have an enormous staff of people who are reporting in to you on all sorts of things – they didn’t see this tweet that was going to set the world on fire?GE: Now John, this tweet, I’m afraid, was not brought to my attention, so I found out about this film after it had gone out... JH: Nobody said to you at any time or to anybody on your staff who would then report to you, “Look, we’ve got this Newsnight film going out – Newsnight should already light a few bulbs with you surely but – we’ve got this film going out that is going to make massively serious allegations about a former senior political...” Nobody even mentioned it?GE: No. JH: Isn’t that extraordinary?GE: Well, um, in the light of what happened here, I wish this had been referred to me, but it wasn’t and I have to... I run the BBC on the basis that the right people are put in the right positions to make the right decisions. Now, in this case the film was not signed off in Newsnight, legal advice was involved, it was referred to the right places in news management and further referral upwards was made...JH: So, when did you find out?GE: I found out about the film the following day. JH: The following day? You didn’t see it that night when it was broadcast? GE: No, I was out...JH: But you have seen the film now I take it?GE: Yes, I have seen the film now...JH: When did you learn that there were doubts about [Mr Messham’s] testimony? GE: I only found out yesterday when I saw him make his apology to Lord McAlpine that there must be doubts about his testimony. JH: And you didn’t ask any questions during the course of the week? Because questions began to be raised very early on in the week as you know. GE: No, John, I didn’t.JH: Do you not think that you should have? GE: I um... I... there are... the number of things that there are going on in the BBC mean that when something is referred to me and brought to my attention I engage with it... JH: We now know Newsnight has failed massively on one programme and it has failed massively on another programme and it’s caused the BBC enormous damage. You, as you say, as Editor-in-Chief, are ultimately responsible. Therefore it leads to the obvious question: You should go, shouldn’t you? GE: No John, I’ve been appointed the director-general, the director-general isn’t appointed only if things are going to go well, the director-general is appointed to deal with things which go well and things which go badly... JH: Have you given any thought to shutting down Newsnight?GE: No, I haven’t John...